Busy elsewhere until lunchtime today, when I got in a had a run through the moth trap, a good lot of moths but nothing really unusual. A silver Y showed that there are still migrants around and there was also the first rosy footman of the year. There were fewer micro-moths than recently, but among them was a tiny micro, which I took a picture of so I could post the name, here goes, Paraswammerdamia albicapitella.
The carp removal was taking place on Mockbeggar Lake again today, I went up to see how things were going, the answer was much as in previous weeks, fish are still being caught steadily. Out on the lake a pair of Egyptian geese were on one of the islands and on an exposed shingle ridge a pair of common tern. The latter probably the rather aimless pair from Ibsley Water that never got down to breed, possibly they are a young pair.
A freshly dead jay was found on the boardwalk south of the Ivy South hide this afternoon, it was an adult, with the tail and secondaries freshly moulted and deep black, contrasting with the remaining, old primaries. It was pretty thin and may have died from the combined effects of hard work rearing a family with lack of food. They like to eat acorns, but even their stored ones will have all gone now, in spring they will eat eggs and nestlings, but these are now almost over too. It had also gone through the effort of growing a good few new feathers. It seems surprising that mid summer can be a time of relative famine but for seed eaters it can be a hard time, just when they have been working flat out and demands upon their bodies have been highest.
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